


Photograph

by JoAsakura



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-28
Packaged: 2017-11-07 07:03:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>EDI sends Kaidan a gift he doesn't expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The File

**Author's Note:**

> I had an idea for a while, of snapshots of Shepard's past strung together by his inherent dislike of having his picture taken.
> 
> So.

Kaidan's not sure what to expect when his omni-tool dings on the way back from mission, with the brief, flickering header of "From: NORMANDY_EDI To: Alenko_K Subj: Open When Alone"

He taps it off quickly and considers the possibilities as they strip out of their armour wearily. (Alone was going to be difficult) he thinks, considering he's been more-or-less living out Shepard's cabin for the last few weeks. Sure, yeah, he's maintained his locker in the crew quarters, but Shepard's bed was far more inviting, primarily because of, well, *Shepard*.

Shepard's own omni-tool bleats and a long-suffering sigh rumbles from the Commander's chest as he shoves his mix-and-match bits of armour into their diagnostic cubbies. "Shit."

"Trouble?" Kaidan asks, unable to stop admiring the view as Shepard unzips his undersuit and peels the black fabric back from his skin. Beside them, Javik doesn't bother removing his own, instead, he only rolls his multiple eyes and sets his rifle down on the repair table to finesse some issue with the trigger.

"Hackett." the commander grunts as he fishes out a t-shirt and trousers. "Traynor's message says 'bring chair and coffee, this is going to be a long one, sir.'" He sighs, too unkempt for an official meeting but clearly past caring. "looks like I'm missing dinner."

Kaidan shoves a protein bar at him, letting their fingers twine briefly. "Eat this before you pass out. I'll grab you some real dinner and put it aside upstairs for you for later, OK?" He murmurs in Shepard's ear, and he feels the stubbled cheek beneath his lips twitch with a quick smile.

"You're entirely too good to me, Major Alenko." Shepard pulls away, still wearing that tiny smile and waves at him with the bar. "See you in a few hours."

"Someone has to be." Kaidan shoots back, and beside him, Javik snorts.

"At the height of the empire, a great captain would have a harem of highly-trained attendants catering to his needs, so that he might focus solely on the arts of war. It seems a pity that all Shepard has is you, soldier." the prothean says drily.

"And *this*, Javik, is why no one likes you."

~~~

As badly as he feels for Shepard, stuck in a war council meeting, Kaidan's grateful for the alone time, opening EDI's file as he chows down on what claims to be a taco from the mess hall.

Whatever it is, the file is huge, he realises, waiting for it to open. "EDI, what did you send me?" he asks the air. Any sense of privacy is pretty much false on the Normandy, as there wasn't any part of the ship that she wasn't in tune with.

"When I was first installed on the Normandy, and told that I would be serving Commander Shepard, I took initiative to research his history and activities." EDI purrs. "He is reluctant to speak of himself under the best of circumstances, so I culled information from Cerberus, Alliance and various other sources to build a composite."

"This isn't like the Shepard VI, is it?" Kaidan asks as the download from EDI's servers finally finish.

"Hardly. The files are only marginally interactive, and I doubt they will give you any insight into your own pet-owning tendencies." It's always hard to tell with EDI, but he's pretty certain she's having one over on him at that point. "Regardless, I thought that out of everyone on the crew, you would most appreciate a glimpse at them."

"Thanks, EDI." Kaidan grins around a mouthful of meatlike filling and sits back, excited and unsure all at once.

~~~

 

He's astonished at the first picture.

(March 10, 2163)

A boy, red-brown hair that looks like it was cut by a weedwhacker, stares warily at the camera. He's so... tiny. Skinny. Pale, bright eyes far too big for his head and he looks like one of those awkward baby owls you saw on nature shows.

One of his eyes is swollen shut and bruised, and there's a hand on his shoulder. The man the hand belongs to is cropped out, but it's ridiculously big (beefy, gold ring digging into the meaty flesh of a manicured finger) compared to the bony shoulder of the child it's firmly clamped on, as if he might make a run for it any second.

Kaidan recognises Космозайчик - CosmoBunny - not only the battered toy fiercely clutched in the crook of one birdlike arm, but the faded design with it's cartoony Cyrillic logo on his too-big shirt.

Shepard has only spoken about the orphanage (Alliance sponsored, like so many around the world in the mid 2150s/60s, but run locally, and with sad frequency also run very badly) in the most distant of terms, and all Kaidan really wants to do is scoop this small, strange creature up in his arms and tell him about all the amazing things he's going to see.

(You are going to be so beautiful and strong when you grow up, little Shepard. You're already brave, though. I can see it in your face.)

There are links in the image, but Kaidan skips them for now, scrolling to the next one, shaking his head as the screen fills with an angry youth.


	2. (13 August 2167) - (10 April 2168)

(13 August 2167)

Weedwhacker hair replaced by a badly-done mohawk, garish green dye fading at the tips. But it's hardly a school photo, Kaidan sees, the boy holding a numbered card in front of him for the police files. Small hands with long, graceful fingers, bitten nails done up in chipped black polish. That same CosmoBunny shirt, still slightly too big and the sleeves long gone, reveals a mess of cheap, homebrew prison-style tattoos on skinny, skinny arms.

He's got another black eye (the other one this time) and a split lip pulled into a dismissive sneer. (Kaidan knows the tiny scar on the swell of Shepard's lower lip intimately well) And his eyes, those beautiful fierce eyes, are flicked off to the side, unwilling to meet the harsh gaze of the camera. Sores around his nose, Kaidan notices. The signs of a duster, and he frowns at a memory.

(Lying in Huerta Memorial, some random crack about the difference between success and sitting around in one's pj's snorting red sand. Shepard had broken eye contact for a moment, unfocused with a rueful snort that brought him back to attention a moment later)

This boy, this skinny child with his sneer and his bruised face, can't be more than thirteen, Kaidan realises.

By that age, Kaidan was already a winner in the 'get your life ruined by BAaT' sweepstakes. But as problematic as the L2 implants were, the training had kept him sane as his powers developed and the eezo crackled in his nerves. The Important People at Conatix told him how special he was, how important. And for whatever that was worth, to a certain degree, Kaidan had believed them.

There was no one telling this... child... those things. No one realising that one dusted-up little punk was the real deal, probably toking hits of sand to ease the terrifying strangeness that came with biotic onset.

This time, Kaidan clicks on the provided links, the translator spitting out into english a laundry list of petty crimes and misdemeanours of the shoplifting and pickpocketing variety. He can't help but grin a little bit. Shepard has never been a particularly subtle sort, and the number of arrests and warnings and missed juvenile hearings only reinforce that getting out of that business was probably the best thing he could have done.

The list gets uglier as Kaidan scrolls, and Shepard's last record with the Moscow Megacity Militsiya causes him to temporarily close the file and stare at the starfield through the loft's ceiling.

(10 April 2168)

The security video is grainy and blurry, but Kaidan recognises the flare that momentarily whites out the screen, and when he changes the speed, he can watch the liquor store's windows blow out from the sonic boom in slo-mo, Shepard's uncontrolled, untrained biotic charge tearing through a knot of thugs beating an old man half-to-death within.

(He faintly remembers Shepard talking about the Reds, the gang he'd belonged to. How they'd grown more and more violent and how his separation from them had not been a pleasant one. As Kaidan sees the surviving teens turn on the confused boy, he realises that was typical Shepard understatement at work.)

The timely arrival of the local cops scatters them, and Kaidan watches, heartbroken, through the cheap security camera's eye as the ambulances take the boy and the old man away.

Hospital records link up, filled with photos that he can barely look at, and slowly pieces together a story Shepard's never shared.

A day before his birthday, near-lethal levels of red sand in his system, the boy that would one day grow up to be the most famous human in the galaxy was trying to kill himself with an overdose as he kept half-assed watch for his gang-mates. But the robbery went bad and something had clearly snapped inside of Shepard. Drugs and rage had fuelled that first biotic charge, saved a man's life and given a broken child his first steps towards a new life.

(Another memory, Shepard nodding in understanding as Kaidan explained the anger that had driven his powers when he'd killed Vyrnnus, the adrenaline manifesting itself in a wall of force behind his kick. He looks at the timestamp again with a frown. Out on Jump Zero, about an hour from Shepard's first charge, seventeen-year-old Kaidan Alenko will be breaking a very bad man's neck.)

For a moment, Kaidan desperately wishes he had the power to change time, tell his angry younger-self that there is an equally angry fourteen year old boy in a Russian slum and he should go find him and imagine together the lives they can have.

And know they were born for each other.


	3. (09 January 2171) -  (07 May 2176) /NOW

(09 January 2171)

For the first time, Shepard looks like... well, _Shepard_. At least more like Shepard, at any rate. Skinny limbs caught in a spurt of growth in all directions, jaw and cheekbones losing the fragility in their early photos. He looks... solid, Kaidan thinks. The span of Shepard's shoulders at 17 are almost as broad as they are at 32, and the shirt he wears (a delivery boy's uniform, he imagines, liquor store logo embroidered on the pocket) is too small, straining against new muscles. The sleeves end far above his wrists, and a few of those awful tattoos poke out at the wrist.

(After Kaidan had seen Vega wincing at his new tattoo, he'd joked that he should have gotten a SPECTRE logo when the Council inducted him. Shepard had just laughed, and told him a story about how he'd spent his first real Alliance pay on getting HIS tattoos removed. "I wanted a clean start.")

Mohawk gone, replaced by a terrible almost-shaved head, (and Kaidan wonders if Shepard has EVER had a decent haircut in his life) bitten nails free of polish, one hand fisted on his thigh as if he can't wait to get away. For once, there are no black eyes, bruises or scrapes on his face and he's looking just enough off to the side to pretend he's looking at the camera when he's not.

Kaidan zooms the best he can on the background, a recruiting office somewhere, glamourous images of Alliance marines being heroic on the walls. He skims the links, sees Shepard was too young to officially enlist, but his test scores and power potential gain him a slot in some pre-enlistment "Biotic Enrichment Program". He doesn't have surgical scars yet from the first-gen L3 implants, but he's clearly sober off the dust and he's trying so very hard to make that clean start.

He wonders what was going through the recruiter's mind that day, this oddly awkward and painfully handsome young man with an arrest record as long as his arm sitting stiffly in the hard plastic chair.

Shepard almost.. ALMOST.. looks directly at the camera in the official military portrait that follows shortly after. He's not quite 19, fresh out of OTS, another lousy haircut hidden under his dress uniform's cap. Basic training's agreed with him, Kaidan notices, because those shoulders at not-quite-19 are definitely as broad as they are at 32

He feels like a dirty old man, wanting to run his thumb over that tiniest of scars on Shepard's lower lip and whisper how proud he is of him as he peels that impossibly gorgeous young man out of the stiff blues.

(07 May 2176)

The Skyllian Blitz.

Kaidan's seen the images of the Blitz. Everyone's seen the images of the blitz, he thinks. The small band of weary soldiers who fought off the invaders at the Elysium Spaceport, the crew fighting above in the Agincourt. And the iconic image of a 22 year old Lieutenant Shepard at the gates to Paradise Falls, battered and all alone, his fist raised in the air amidst the wreckage of a platoon of pirate vehicles.  
Kaidan was on the other side of the galaxy during the blitz, but he can still remember the newsfeed: "Biotic marine singlehandedly defends settlement in nine-hour assault - Hero of Elysium", and the strange warmth that had accompanied it. 

(A biotic hero,) he smiles at the memory. That was when he'd developed an abstract crush on Shepard. Just for that one headline.

But when he scrolls past the official images, Kaidan pauses. The photo was cleaned up for public consumption, he realises as he watches the small bit of vid from a dropship's camera. 

Shepard isn't just battered - the black eye would be almost-funny in the context of the past photos - but he's bleeding, from the ears, from the nose, thin rivulets oozing from the corner of his mouth. Those beautiful eyes of his are bloodshot and nearly all pupil and he is looking *directly* at the camera because whatever he's seeing, an Alliance dropship is definitely not it.

Kaidan's stomach does a sick little twist as he watches - he'd seen those signs in BAaT - the unlucky children who were pushed too far past their limits, their brains and nervous systems literally eating themselves alive. Shepard had been fighting, holding the line, for nearly nine hours. No food, no rest, and when he'd run out of weapons, it had been his biotics alone that had kept the enemy at bay. 

But the worst is when he turns away, just a bit and just for a moment, and Kaidan can see that the standard issue military amp Shepard wears is *glowing*. The pain of an overloading amp is unbearable, and he's so far gone, he doesn't even notice. And then, Shepard turns back, and the screen turns white with a flare of power, then goes dead.

EDI's flagged reports indicate that Captain David Anderson was among the reinforcement teams, and somehow managed to talk Shepard down before he killed the entire dropship crew and destroyed the ship with it.

He skips past the news footage, past appended reports of Vanguard instability, until he comes to a later vid, Shepard wrapped in blankets, clearly trying to steady hands (filthy, knuckles split and oozing but still oddly graceful) as he drinks a supplement. He looks up and catches a glimpse of whomever's shooting the video, and with blood still crusted on his face, gives a rueful little smile and a nod, eyes darting off to the side.

Kaidan's fingers itch to gently wipe his face clean, be the calm support a trembling Vanguard can lean on. He wants to yell at the Council, at the reapers, at everyone - if only just to buy Shepard a little time to rest and recover. But he can only gently touch the screen with a frown,

Now:

There's so much more in the file, Kaidan realises, more than he can handle at the moment, so he clicks off his omni-tool and stares up at the starfield ceiling. All those awkward, painful images of Shepard. The bloody noses and black eyes. The beautiful, battered hands (with the lattice of scars on his knuckles that he knows so well). It's like history has mostly chosen to remember Shepard's hard times, and it makes him sad.

He's so tangled up in his thoughts he doesn't hear Shepard slump in the room until he sits down by the plate of food on the table and starts eating like a starving krogan.

"Hey." Kaidan says, and Shepard looks up from shovelling food into his mouth, a wad of meat-like taco filling pocketed in his cheek like an enormous squirrel. 

It's too good and Kaidan quick-snaps a photo with his omni-tool before Shepard can look away and swallow. "Hey, what was that for?" He asks, with a cough.

The image is actually adorable, and Kaidan just smiles. If he can, even just a little, add to EDI's file with images of Shepard being the odd, warm and occasionally *happy* person he gets to see on a regular basis, it'll be worth it. 

But in reply, he shakes his head and watches the Commander go back to devouring his tacos with gusto. "Just a photograph, Shepard. Nothing special."


End file.
